UPR Submission Ethiopia April 2009
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UPR Submission Ethiopia April 2009 Ethiopia’s human rights record has deteriorated sharply in recent years, marked by a harsh intolerance for independent civil society activity, criticism of government actions, or opposition political activity. Government critics continue to be subjected to harassment, arrest, and even torture. Repressive new legislation passed in 2009 will make most forms of human rights monitoring impossible while a proposed anti-terrorism law is so broad that it could make a serious crime out of peaceful protest. In most of the country the possibility for independent political activity simply does not exist, and in April 2008 the ruling party and its allies won some 99 percent of seats in mostly uncontested local elections. Ethiopia’s military forces have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious abuses in the context of several different conflicts. These abuses have been committed against Ethiopian citizens during brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in Somali and Gambella regions, and also abroad during Ethiopia’s two-year military intervention in neighboring Somalia. The Ethiopian government has made no serious effort to investigate or ensure accountability for any of these abuses. Political Repression The run-up to Ethiopia’s nationwide elections in 2005 saw a limited, but unprecedented, opening up of space for political activity and free expression. But the polls ended in controversy with leading opposition politicians refusing to accept defeat, and government security forces staging mass arrests and gunning down protesters in the streets of Addis Ababa. Since then the limited opening that preceded the election has been entirely reversed, and the trend is one of steadily growing repression over time. Ethiopian government officials at all levels regularly subject government critics or political opponents to harassment, arrest, and even torture. Prominent opposition leader Birtukan Midekssa is currently serving a life sentence after the government revoked a pardon it issued for alleged acts of treason connected to post-election protests in 2005. The decision to revoke her pardon was likely a response to her continued criticism of the government. Repression affects prominent dissidents and ordinary citizens alike. Across Ethiopia and particularly in politically sensitive areas such as Oromia and Somali Region, local officials harass, imprison, or threaten to withhold vital government assistance from perceived government critics. 1 Government critics are often accused of serious crimes such as membership in insurgent or terrorist organizations. Most are released without being brought to trial due to the lack of any evidence against them, but only after punitively lengthy periods of detention. Bekele Jirata, the general secretary of a prominent opposition party, the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, was detained with dozens of others on flimsy accusations of support for the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front in 2008. He was released without being convicted of any crime, but only after spending more than two months in prison. These heavy-handed measures have largely succeeded in eliminating independent political activity in most of Ethiopia. This fact was put on stark display during crucial local kebele and wereda elections in April 2008. The ruling party and its allies won 99 percent of seats across the country, mostly in races that were uncontested. In the small percentage of constituencies where opposition parties did contest, some of their candidates were subjected to harassment, beatings, and detention. A draft counterterrorism law the government intends to introduce in 2009 threatens to lend itself to easy use as a tool of repression. Ethiopia has suffered deadly terrorist attacks on its soil and, in October 2008, on its trade mission in Hargeisa, Somaliland; its concerns about terrorism are real. But early drafts of the law contained such overbroad definitions of terrorism that the law could easily be applied to acts of peaceful protest. It also opens the door to confessions extracted through torture by placing the burden of proof on suspects who confess while allowing their interrogators to keep evidence of torture secret. War Crimes and other Abuses by Ethiopian Military Forces Ethiopian military forces have committed widespread violations of international humanitarian law and other serious abuses in at least three separate conflicts since 2004. In no case has the Ethiopian government made any credible effort to investigate the abuses or hold those responsible to account. The Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s volatile Somali region is the scene of a long running conflict between the Ethiopian military and the insurgent Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). In 2007 that conflict took a brutal turn following an ONLF attack on a facility at Obole, housing civilian Chinese and Ethiopian oil workers that saw some 70 Ethiopian and Chinese civilians killed. The military responded with large-scale violence directed at Ogadeni communities suspected of having links to the ONLF. At the peak of the conflict in 2007 the conduct of Ethiopian military forces in the region was marked by widespread acts of forced displacement, murder, rape, torture, arbitrary detention, and pillage. Human Rights Watch concluded that these abuses amounted to crimes against humanity. There is strong evidence that vital food aid to the drought-affected region has been diverted and misused as a weapon to starve out rebel-held areas. The government prohibits independent reporting on conflict-affected areas and an investigation it commissioned in 2008 resulted in a whitewash that absolved government forces of all 2 wrongdoing. Fighting between military and ONLF forces has continued into 2009, along with a commercial blockade on some conflict-affected areas. In neighboring Somalia, Ethiopian military forces intervened in December 2006 to bolster the country’s ailing Transitional Federal Government. For two years Ethiopian forces became bogged down in a brutal insurgency that saw all sides commit war crimes and other serious abuses on an almost daily basis. Ethiopian forces in the Somali capital of Mogadishu regularly responded to insurgent attacks by indiscriminately shelling entire neighborhoods with mortar and rocket fire, with devastating consequences. Ethiopian forces also regularly responded to attacks staged in crowded areas by firing wildly into crowds of civilians trapped in the area. No one has been held to account for any of these abuses and no investigation is underway. Ethiopian military forces withdrew from Somalia in December 2008. In Ethiopia’s remote southwestern region of Gambella, Ethiopian military forces launched a wave of attacks against ethnic Anuak communities in late 2003 and 2004. These attacks were part of an effort to put down a low-level but tenacious insurgency with its roots in the Anuak population. Ethiopian military forces burned down villages and small hamlets; targeted Anuak civilians for extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape; and indulged in widespread looting. These abuses rose to the level of crimes against humanity. The government’s only attempt at an investigation examined just one massacre in December 2003 and absolved senior officials of any wrongdoing. Civil Society and the Media The environment for civil society and independent media organizations in Ethiopia continues to deteriorate. Legislation passed in 2008 and 2009 looks set to codify growing trends towards attempts at suppressing independent human rights work and critical journalism. Growing intolerance for civil society critiques of government actions at all levels has been growing for years, especially in the area of human rights. In the wake of the 2005 elections, human rights activists the government accused of having links to the opposition were harassed, arrested, and in some cases forced to flee the country. Until this year, though, their work was not illegal. In February 2009, the government passed a new NGO law which forbids “foreign” NGOs from doing any work that touches on human rights and a broad range of other issues. Ethiopia has long prevented Human Rights Watch and other international human rights groups from openly carrying out research in the country. But the new law also labels local groups who receive more than 10 percent of their funds from sources outside Ethiopia as “foreign” and bars them from carrying out human rights work as well. The law also enacts a complex and onerous system of government surveillance and control, and enacts criminal penalties for those who fail to comply with the law’s byzantine bureaucratic 3 requirements. The likely effect of the law is the closing down of all major human rights reporting organizations in Ethiopia and a profound chilling effect on all of the civil society groups that remain in existence. A media law passed in 2008 reforms some of the most repressive elements of the preexisting legal framework. Most importantly, it eliminates the practice of pretrial detention for journalists—although at least one prominent journalist, the editor of the Reporter newspaper, was subjected to the practice after the law’s passage. The law also creates serious new problems for the independent media, however. It grants the government significant leeway to restrain free speech, including by summarily impounding publications on grounds of national security or public order. The law also maintains criminal penalties including prison terms for journalists found guilty of libel